Optics Welded Shut
by Reality Obscured
Summary: An expansion of the 7th part of my "UN" series... Through the bonding of their Sparks, Prowl found out secrets about Jazz's past he'd rather have not known...but he doesn't realize it's the key to unlocking his own.
1. Chapter I

--Written By: Reality Obscured--

--Chapter I--

Author Note: This is a little spin-off from the "Unexpected" drabble of my "UN" series. Honestly, I didn't really know what I was don' when I started writing this. It...came out a little differently than I thought it would.

Warnings: Detailed scenes of mech torture…

nano-klick : 1/10th second

astro-second : 1/2 second

klick : second

cycle : minute

breem (1000 astroseconds) : 8.3 minutes

megacycle : hour

groon: 1 hour...roughly

joor (5 cycles or 50 breems) : 7 hours

quartec : 1/4 day

decacycle : 30 days

solar cycle/Orn (1 Cybertronian Day) : 20 Hours

stellar cycle (1 Cybertronian Year) : 400 Days

Vorn : 83 Years

* * *

Back Then…

_The restraining cuffs were tight, biting into the metal of his forearms; the set around his ankles were doing the same. Whoever it was that managed to get the jump on him obviously didn't believe in taking chances. Or maybe they knew how Black Ops agents worked. Whichever was the case, Rhythm figured he wasn't going to get out of here any time soon. He could feel straps across his chest and thighs, too. It didn't take any measure of the imagination to suppose they were heavy duty. And, he was sitting down, so he was probably lashed to some kind of seat._

_One thing was for sure. He honestly wished he hadn't turned down that sonic emitter upgrade Sledgehammer, the Black Ops medic, had offered. It'd be real useful in getting out of these bonds right about now._

_A quick diagnostic told him that he'd been offline for nearly three groons. Considering all he could remember was lying down for a quick recharge on Prowl's berth two of those groons ago, whoever had done this had done a real professional job of it._

_"I thought I told you to stay away from Prowl. You didn't listen, Rhythm."_

_Ah, yes. The magnificent voice of Sentinel Prime. Somehow this situation made just that much more sense. Rhythm powered up his optics, finding the massive Prime standing barely five meters away. Dark room. Metallic gray walls. His olfactory sensors picked up familiar scent particles in the air around them. Hot oil, solder, and electricity. Pit. He was in the "special" brig they took "special" prisoners to._

_Wasn't he special._

_"You haven't defiled that Spark of his with yours yet, have you?" Sentinel asked bitingly._

_Only Primus himself knew better than Rhythm did how badly Sentinel treated "him", and of how little he cared. "What do you care?"_

_The rumbling reply was dark and amused. "Just needed to know if you'll know what you'll be missing."_

_Rhythm felt a pair of hands on his chest plates then, the owner a yellow-visored mech he'd never seen before. He tensed up, doing his best to keep the seams of his armor plating tight against each other and his chassis...only to completely freeze in place when the blade of an energon-bladed scalpel entered his line of sight. Sentinel had left his last comment so open, so vague, that Rhythm's CPU could only provide equally vague guesses as to what was going to happen to him now._

Now...

"I still don't understand why you won't let me just rip it out and replace the whole optical assembly." Ratchet said as he used micro-fine tools to run a check over what was left of Jazz's optical array.

"Keepin' it around so I never forget how I got it, Ratch'." Jazz replied smoothly. "'Sides, I see better with th' visor than I ever did with my optics."

Ratchet vented, mimicking the sighing sound Jazz was sure the medic had picked up from Sparkplug. Ever since the red and white found out about the condition of Jazz's abused and damaged optical assembly, he'd been pestering the saboteur about replacing it. Not that Ratchet knew how he'd managed to get them slagged up that way in the first place. Nobody knew...unless one counted himself and the memory circuits inside the deactivated remains of the other Black Ops agents. He still answered when Ratchet asked his usual question, and the answer was the same every time. He wanted to remember what Sentinel Prime had done to him. It was his reminder of who he had once been, why he had continued on, and who he had continued on for.

With practiced ease, Ratchet replaced the opaque white optical glass that covered the melted mass of wiring. He patted Jazz on the shoulder, and the black and white sat up, replacing and activating his visor. In a few astroseconds, Ratchet and his surroundings appeared before him.

"You know the drill, Jazz." Ratchet tapped his own chest in emphasis. "Open up."

This was the part he didn't like. He always felt so...vulnerable. All the same, he split his chest plates apart and let Ratchet get to the Spark chamber underneath. Ratchet had been taken aback the first time he'd seen the Special Ops agent's scarred and brutalized Spark chamber, but now? He didn't even flinch. War takes that kind of thing out of you, Jazz supposed. Eventually, even the worst of things didn't seem so bad anymore. It became part of normality.

_His vocalizer had shorted out long ago, the severity and length of the screams too much for the hardware. There was nothing Rhythm could do but quiver, wishing to at least offline to end this. Several data cables were connected to him to keep him from off lining. His head had been lashed back against the seat when he'd begun thrashing earlier. His chest lay open and bare to the world, the armor cut away and on the ground at his bound feet._

Static and sparks spewed from his vocal processor as it received the signal to scream again. If he could've processed anything but pain, he would have likely thanked Primus that the other mech was almost done welding his Spark chamber shut.

Ratchet signaled that he was done, and Jazz closed his chest plates back, hopping off of the medical berth. "Well, doc? What's the report?"

"Take two energon goodies and call me in the morning." Ratchet good-naturedly replied while checking on his list to see who was due in next. "While you're at it, tell Prowl to get his aft in here. He's next."

Mandatory check-ups. They were the Pits, in Jazz's opinion, but Prowl was one 'bot who literally ran from them. Last year, Ratchet had spent several orns trying to track the tactician down. Strangely, and actually not surprisingly, Prowl's work as Autobot tactician and Second-In-Command hadn't suffered at all during the time of his so-called absence. When he reappeared later -only a megacycle after Ratchet declared Prowl a defective glitch and stopped looking for him- he denied running from the medic at all. He didn't say where'd he'd gone, either, and skillfully avoided any and all questions when asked.

There was a reason Prowl was called Prowl, Jazz mused, even if he didn't flaunt it. It didn't help they'd had to come in at least once an Earth week now to get checked up since they'd bonded.

--

It took a little doing, but Jazz eventually found Prowl deep inside the Strategy Room of the Ark, working on the wiring to the holographic display. It hadn't worked since the crash four million years ago. According to Prowl, Wheeljack, Ratchet, Hoist, and Grapple had better, more valuable things to do around the Ark rather than work on something like the Strategy Room. This was where he'd discovered Prowl had been disappearing to occasionally, and especially during most of his last check-ups with Ratchet. Whether anyone actually knew it or not, the tactician actually had some pretty good electronic skills programmed away in his hard drive. It came from learning the finer points of wiring during field repair.

The squeal of the pneumonic doors being forced open alerted Prowl to another mech's presence, and he didn't look up to see who it was. There was only one other mech who knew where he was in the first place. Jazz.

"Mandatory check-ups?" He asked.

Jazz walked over to the console, squatting down to get a better look at the half-submerged tactician. "Yup." He watched Prowl work for a moment before, "What'cha gonna do when ya finally fix it?"

"Considering the state of this room?" Prowl hmphed. "I have enough work to last me well into the early 2000 A.D.s."

Jazz settled down the rest of the way, lazily leaning up against the machinery near Prowl. The tactician himself was half submerged underneath the console--his top half with just his legs poking out. The saboteur allowed himself to process exactly how close they had been to having something once. Ever since that day on the battlefield, every movement, every conversation around the other felt strained.

When Prowl had learned to block his half of their newly formed bond, it had only gotten worse. He was at least thankful that Prowl hadn't denied him his friendship…what little they had of it left. He'd all but ripped away everything else after discovering the truth hidden in Jazz's Spark. It was more like he simply tolerated him now.

"Once the holographic emitter is in sync with the console AND working, I should be able to uplink my battle computer to it, enhancing it's capability and precision up to 150. There are times when my CPU alone can't keep up with the seemingly endless variables Earth has to offer."

Jazz lightly brushed his digits across his chest over where his Spark chamber was situated. The light pain was starting up again. "How long ya been at it?"

"The better part of the last two megacycles." Came the reply. "Why do you ask?"

"Just wonderin'."

He dropped his hand to his lap, content in just listening to Prowl work. He refused to regret what he'd done. He'd given up too much already. Ratchet's check-up could wait. The moment, for once, didn't feel strained or forced upon them. On the recently rare occasions that this did happen, he always let it fool him into believing that there was some kind of Primus-forsaken hope out there.


	2. Chapter II

--Written By: Reality Obscured--

--Chapter II--

Warnings: None for this chapter.

* * *

"What?"

"I told you this would happen, Prowl." Ratchet repeated, pulling back to let the 2IC close his chest plates. "The bond is too new to be fragged with like this. You can't keep blocking Jazz."

Prowl vacated the medical berth and stood. "Then I'll stop the block and let Jazz back in. How long will I have to wait before I can set it back up?"

"It's not that simple." The CMO frowned. He didn't know what Prowl had seen in Jazz's Spark, but to be bad enough to end what those two black and whites had developed over millions of years? "Unblocking him will stop the damage from getting worse, but you're gonna have to Spark-bond with him to repair it. It's all part of being bonded. It's not just your Spark anymore, Prowl."

He'd endured the continuously growing ache in his Spark for as long as he could. When it's pulsing had started becoming erratic, his logic center had taken over and convinced him it was time to do something about it. This…was not quite what he had expected. "You're saying that if Jazz and I renew our bond, the pain will stop?"

Ratchet snorted. "Hardly. You've done a lot of slaggin' damage with your stunt. The pain will get less, but you'll have to bond regularly to repair most of it."

An irritated twitch started in both door-wings. "Perhaps another option would be more suitable—"

"Isn't one. Jazz already asked."

Prowl was caught off guard with that. "Jazz already… He hasn't said a word to me."

"Do you think he would after the way you've been treating him, Prowl?" The CMO asked. "I don't know what kind of slag happened between the two of you, but get over it! Have you even considered what JAZZ gave up to save your slaggin' aft?"

If asked, Ratchet could have sworn he'd heard a strained groan from the tensors of Prowl's sensory panels as they were pulled taunt. A scowl, so close to becoming an actual snarl, set on the tactician's lip components. "What he gave?" Nobody moved, but Ratchet honestly had never more felt the urge to retreat than he did now. He didn't think Prowl COULD let his emotions out like this.

The doors of the medbay opened up, First Aid walking in. The presence of another seemed to snap Prowl out of it. Ratchet had seen mechs shift emotional gears quickly before, but none as fast as what he witnessed in front of him. In barely over a klik, all evidence of the anger was completely gone. Only a program designed to block the feed from emotion circuits could do that, and Ratchet would stake his medical training on it that Prowl had just initiated one.

"You're irreplaceable as a medic to this army, Chief Medical Officer Ratchet." Prowl spoke, voice even and emotionless. "But it might be best if you kept away from the field of psychiatry."

On that note, Prowl turned and left the medbay, nodding in acknowledgement to First Aid on the way. First Aid looked to Ratchet, confused. A wave of his mentor's hand dismissed any and all verbal questions the young Protectobot might've had. Some patient confidentiality was not shared, even among medics. Only Jazz's records were more secretive than the 'bot's who had just left.

Ratchet took this time to move to the chair in his office, slumping down on it to let his systems ease up from the episode. He'd honestly thought he'd finally pushed Prowl too far. This was EXACTLY why he hadn't wanted to combine the Second-and-Third-In-Command's Sparks. He'd seen it before—bonds formed to save the life of one or both mech's—and this was usually how it went. Bonds were a gloves off, all secrets revealed kind of thing. If the mech's involved found something inside the other that really put them off, well… Predictable Prowl had fallen right into the norm. He'd set up a block immediately and damaged both their Sparks.

For all the logic that slaghead had, didn't Prowl realize the Autobots couldn't afford to lose them?

-- -- --

Jazz felt it when Prowl removed the block. All at once his world expanded, and he went from recharging to fully online in a matter of moments. He onlined his visor, the soft blue light illuminating the dark room he shared with Mirage. A feeling he could only explain as a light tug pulled at his Spark...

Mirage onlined his optics to watch the saboteur make his silent exit. Above everything else, he hoped the mech knew what he was getting into.

Prowl was sitting on his berth when Jazz found him, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He barely looked up when the saboteur entered, only meeting optics when he heard the tell-tale sound of the security lock of the door as it activated.

"Blocker program all set up?" The Porsche asked as he strode slowly over to the berth.

Prowl nodded. "It's the only way, and this needs to be done."

Jazz placed his hands on the tactician's shoulders, guiding him down, not hiding the distaste evident in his voice. "Let's make it quick."

--

He was…stiffer, colder. Jazz didn't like it, and he knew that Sentinel Prime was to blame. Before, the other black and white had always had at least the hint of a small smile. Now? He hadn't seen Prime's new "Administrative Assistant" smile since. Now it took a whole slagging heap of work to get the mech to show any kind of emotion at all, not that he could try much. Considering his new status as "Jazz" in the Special Operations division of the Security Services, he couldn't risk doing anything to be found out.

Whatever the mech beside him was saying was lost on dysfunctional audios. He was too busy fighting back the extreme unease he was feeling to pay attention. It wasn't necessarily abnormal for Sentinel to stand that close to Prowl during a meeting. Too bad nobody else knew the actual reason why. The datapad in his hand popped, cracking along one edge as the tension of his grip increased. Whatever Sentinel had done to Prowl had been more than just a partial memory wipe…

He hoped this meeting wasn't going to last long, like last time.

Prowl onlined slowly, his system not up to running at any higher speeds just yet. Their Sparks had been weaker than expected, the bonding leaving them both greatly depleted. He could feel Jazz still in deep recharge on the berth beside him.

Now that his optics were receiving input, the imagery from before faded, but the small sensations that accompanied it were still transmitting through their link. The subject of a partial memory wipe had come up in many of the images he'd received before from Jazz…and right now, there was no doubting how strongly the saboteur felt about it. His logic center booted up properly at about that moment, giving his half-online CPU an option, one that he should have thought of before.

There was no room for doubts in the Spark. What he was seeing was the truth, straight from Jazz's own perspective. Granted, something definitive had yet to have been transmitted... Not yet. It was, however, a resource at his disposal that he intended now upon using.


	3. Chapter III

--Written By: Reality Obscured--

--Chapter III--

Warnings: Slashy slashy... But not very well written slashy...

Author's Note: This is kinda short compared to what I wanted it t' be. Whenever I tried to lengthen it, nothin' I wrote seemed to fit right...

* * *

It wasn't WHAT Prowl was doing that had Jazz upset. It was the fact that it had taken him until the fourth time to figure out exactly what the tactician had planned. In his defense, he'd suspected something around the second time. Upset? No. He wasn't that. It was more like he was aggravated. Prowl was delving into his Spark for information and wasn't even getting the stuff that mattered! Out of everything, he'd yet to see what that fragging Prime had done to him! To THEM! At this point, it didn't matter what blame Prowl tried to place on him. He didn't regret a micron. And Prowl himself had gone too long not knowing his part of the story; it was only hurting them both.

-- -- --

During their next bonding session, Jazz made his move. Their chest compartments were open, chambers split and Sparks bared for the other. Jazz lifted his hips and arched, throwing Prowl to the side and pulling him under him. Prowl grunted from the uncomfortable, almost painful pressure suddenly placed on his door-wings…but it distracted him long enough for Jazz to capture and pin his arms and secure his new position on top.

:It's for ya own good, Prowl.: Jazz spoke through their bond before pressing his Spark down upon it's other half.

_The Helix Gardens of Praxus…thousands of blue reverberating crystals suspended in methane gas… It was the only place he'd always had available to him to clear his head. Sometimes, the world around him became just too much. The music became too loud, the sights too bright, too vivid… At least hear the sensory information only became too much when he let it._

_Right now, the only thing he wanted pinging any receptors was the sight before his optics. The mech was elegant and well made, and if there was a flaw, Rhythm couldn't see it. The only mar on an otherwise shimmering pearl and ebony schemed surface was the markings of his rank in the Security Services. The black and white was an apparently an officer and under Sentinel Prime's direct command at that. The sweeping sensory panels, gropeable aft, and that soft smile playing across pale lip components was more than enough to make up for any trouble it might bring him._

_When the other mech finally locked optics with him, it was that smile that had Rhythm hook, line, and sinker._

_--_

_"Prowl!"_

_"Sir!"_

_The large Prime narrowed his optics slightly. "Before I leave for Iacon, I want to go over those plans you made one more time."_

_Rhythm wished that, for once, Prowl would have the programming to dispute the fact that sentinel had asked him to go over those plans three times already in the last orn. Considering the fact it was a small-time raid of a practically worthless arms dealer. What was so hard to understand? "Yes, sir. I'll be right there."_

_"Now, Prowl." Sentinel Prime frowned, optics flashing once. "You know how I work. I don't like to be kept waiting."_

_This efficiently cut off any complaints the young strategist had. Prowl looked at Rhythm, who was less than a meter away. "Rhythm, I--"_

_"Yeah, Prowl. Ya will see me after shift. I know th' drill." There was a gentle. Apologetic touch to his arm as Prowl produced a data pad from subspace and strode over to where Sentinel Prime was waiting._

_Rhythm didn't even flinch when sentinel shot a prolonged and very un-Prime-like glare his way. If that wasn't enough, the way he towered possessively over the black and white got his point across just fine._

_--_

_"Prowler…" Rhythm asked, leaning tiredly against an equally exhausted Prowl. It had been a particularly heated bout of impromptu interfacing this time. Thankfully nobody had needed this particular storage closet this time around. He looked down, admiring the way the white segments of Prowl's forearms contrasted with his darker coloring while the black portions simply blended. "Why keep this up? Sentinel's ventin' hot air down our neck cables as it is."_

_It was true. Sentinel Prime had very nearly gone out of his way too many times to keep them too busy to meet. Prowl had assured him that Sentinel hadn't said or done a thing out of the ordinary. Not yet, anyway. "I'm being transferred to the headquarters in Kaon within the decacycle." He brushed a thumb across the edge of some armor along Rhythm's chassis. "You could get transferred with--"_

_"Could." Rhythm removed himself from the strategist's arms and stood, not exactly looking away but not making optic contact, either. "But won't." His lips thinned in a tight line. "An' ya know why."_

_--_

_It only hurt in small spurts of a few astroseconds now. He had gone numb throughout most of his chassis, a small mercy that he might've taken the time to thank Primus for if his CPU still had cognitive activity. The only signals still flowing uninterrupted was his optic feed as it automatically downloaded the visual files into his core memory. The Prime a few meters away was all sharp lines and edges, his crystalline blue eyes glowing against the red of his faceplate._

_"He's incoherent, Prime." The mech with the yellow visor observed. "After we disconnect him, he'll offline in nano-klicks."_

_"I told you not to overdo it." Sentinel remarked. "It's too bad. Only one thing left to do. Destroy his optics." Sentinel gave an absent wave as he turned and started to stride away. "Then dump him in an alley somewhere in Kaon. With all the criminal scrap there, it'd be easy enough to believe he was just attacked."_

_Rhythm's view of the retreating Prime was blocked by the other mech, who's right hand began to shift until it had transformed into a welding torch._

--

"Jazz!" Prowl ground out, clutching the saboteur's upper arms hard enough to leave small indentions.

Their cooling systems were straining, threatening to give out entirely. Both of their chassis were slick from the greenish-blue coolant that had burst from a line on Jazz's left side. The excess energy their merged Sparks had built up needed to be expelled or they would have a lot more to worry about than a simple busted coolant line.

Jazz released his interface cable and attacked it to one of Prowl's data ports, synchronizing with the tactician's systems and searching for the other's main sensory network. A precise data burst directly to the targeted system had Prowl stiffening from overload underneath him. The thin line between pleasure and pain was snapped right in half, more or less what the saboteur thought his internals were going to do as he rode the lightning.

He hadn't been able to show Prowl the one thing he needed to see.

-- -- --

First Aid vented a sound akin to a sigh as he cleaned and repaired some of the tools in the medbay. Ratchet was rough on just about everything in here, to the point that even some of the CMO's more favorite tools and items weren't safe. He heard the doors to the medbay open and close, and so being the current medic on duty, he looked up. The spanner and cleaning cloth he was holding fell from his hands.

Prowl stood at the door, Jazz offline and held bridal style in his arms. Coolant coated both of their chassis--Prowl more so than Jazz--and, if First Aid was reading his olfactory sensors correctly, he was detecting the distinct scent of singed circuitry and hot oil. Actually, he amended, burning oil.


End file.
